“Son of a bitch!” It hurt like an ice pick stab, shooting straight from her heel to her hip bone. She lost her balance, tumbling down the hill, head first, sprained arm next. Her throbbing foot screamed in pain.

Nicola came to rest at the bottom of the hill. Dress thoroughly ruined. Bleeding top to bottom.

“Get up, girl,” she told herself.

Nothing moved except for her lips. No, she’d worked too hard, had too much to prove. A little thing like this wasn’t going to take her down. She was too freakin’ smart to stumble like a newbie recruit fresh off the Farm.

“Nothing that can’t heal. Get up. Now.”

Her skin prickled. She wasn’t alone. In a heartbeat, she was on her busted feet, gun drawn, pivoting intuitively. She spun twice, focused her hearing, and took one step forward, her foot touching the gravel side of a rural road. A dozen yards up, an SUV idled in the dark. Three men the size of NFL linebackers stood frozen like oversized yard gnomes.

And they weren’t the men who chased her.

She readied her Beretta. The slide echoed in the moonless night.

One man put his hands up. The two others straightened as if they’d been hunched, ready to throw down on a Maine backwoods road.

She took a step forward. Damn this pitch-black night. She couldn’t see anything more than male outlines. After her run-in with Cash Garrison and then the men who’d shot at her… Lord only knew who else was in on this game.

“Turn around. Move away from the car. Now!” She needed their set of wheels. Maybe she’d strike spy gold and find a charged cell phone.

The man with his hands up took two strides back. Without communicating, the two other men took two steps forward. She did not have time for this. The men from the mansion might be driving this same road or trailing her through the woods. She limped forward, trying not to groan when her injured foot hit gravel again.

“I said move it.” She shuffled toward the driver’s door.

“Nicola?”

Not Cash.

Not Cash by a million years. Far worse. Far more confusing. She couldn’t handle this. Nicola leaped toward the idling car.

***

David leaned against the wall as he heard the pop of gunfire in the bathroom. He loosened the god-awful uniform tie he wore in his role as a butler. Hopefully, Nicola was taken out in one shot, no need for it to get messy.

Tonight had been unexpected. The assassination caused several problems, but most importantly, it affected his retire-from-the-CIA plan. Smooth had paid David handsomely to keep him in the know about investigations into the gun lord’s illegal activities and terrorist connections.